Gifts of the Phoenix
by nuclear death frog
Summary: Divergence during "Chamber of Secrets". Harry gains a phoenix after the events under Hogwarts. This is a re-post with some corrections and editing I have wanted to do for ages.


**For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book.**

Terrifying pain crashed over him, like the entire mass of the wide ocean hitting the beach all at once with crushing force. His every nerve was an inferno, his skull was splitting open, there was a keening wail he heard from miles in the distance...

His sight blinked out in a moment and he crumpled on the floor, unconscious.

He woke... was he awake?... to white clouds and indistinct, blinking images. He was being shaken, and someone was talking to him in a voice he could not recall having ever heard... it was a man's voice.

"Harry."

The voice was clear, but Harry could see nothing of the man speaking to him.

"It's not time yet, Harry."

Where was he? So far as Harry knew, he was in the Chamber of Secrets. He was trying to save Ginny Weasley... he had killed a basilisk set upon him by Tom Riddle, who one day would... who had in the past, grown up to call himself Lord Voldemort. Tom Riddle had come out of a diary... he, Harry, had stabbed the diary with a fang from the basilisk. No one else was around... Ginny Weasley was unconscious. There was no one who could be shaking him, talking to him.

"You've destroyed it, Harry. You can't stay here... it's wrong. But you will see. Find them, Harry. And don't come back yet, Harry. Not for a hundred years."

The voice withdrew. The shaking stopped, and whoever it was, was gone.

He awoke to the sensation of wetness. There were tears on his face... his own?... he didn't think so.

He felt warmth... Fawkes was crying over him again, and singing. It struck purely, and somehow filled him with courage.

And then he heard what sounded like sniffles, close by. He rose, and shook himself hard. He picked up his wand from the floor near the ruined book. Instantly it released a tremendous flood of scarlet and gold sparks and flames, much more than he had ever seen before, but he did not think overly long on this before he slipped the wand into the inner pocket of his robes. It would be something to ask Ollivander about the next time he was in Diagon Alley... perhaps even in the upcoming summer. Fawkes was now in the air, singing joyously... the phoenix then landed on his shoulder.

Harry saw that Ginny Weasley was awake. She had been the source of the sniffles then. She hadn't appeared to notice him yet. He walked over to the enormous corpse of the basilisk, and drew the sword from out the roof of its mouth. In lieu of a proper sheath, he thrust it through his belt; that would do to be going on with. He wouldn't be carrying it for long in any case.

The Sorting Hat also needed retrieving. It was part of Hogwarts... it could not remain here, underground, forever, though this chamber too was part of Hogwarts. Salazar Slytherin himself had built it... and left behind the basilisk.

So much history, he thought. He did not know what else to think. He had secured the sword. That would need to be kept safe, though he hadn't a clue how it had got into the Sorting Hat.

The diary, he remembered. He needed to take it along. It was evidence of... something. Very complex and dangerous magic, certainly, but he did not understand what purpose it had represented to Tom Riddle... Lord Voldemort. Still, Dumbledore would need to examine it at once.

He could now see and vaguely appreciate that he had pretty thoroughly ruined it. Certainly it was no good now as just a diary, not with a great gaping hole through it. The thought flashed across his mind that whatever enchantments had been on it were probably broken. And then, somehow, he _knew_ that to be the case.

"Ginny", he said aloud. He turned back, and saw that she was looking around now. He saw her stare at the basilisk, then at the diary, last at the sword.

She started crying, and then began talking much too fast for him to understand fully. He caught something at the end about her parents. And the name "Riddle" peppered throughout.

"It's alright," Harry managed to say. "The basilisk is dead. Riddle's gone."

Fawkes trilled. Ginny continued crying softly.

Harry looked into the distance, towards the chamber's entrance. "Ron's waiting for us," he said. "We should go."

Ginny nodded, and followed as Harry walked. Fawkes flew off Harry's shoulder, and lit the way.

They reached the head of the chamber in moments, and the tunnel that had led to it. They made progress up the dark tunnel, Fawkes leading the way, and soon the sound of shifting rock reached Harry's ears.

"Ron!" Harry yelled, speeding up. "Ginny's okay! I've got her!"

He heard Ron give a strangled cheer, and they turned the next bend to see his eager face staring through the sizeable gap he had managed to make in the rock fall.

"_Ginny!_" Ron thrust an arm through the gap in the rock to pull her through first, then hugged her fiercely with what looked to Harry as all his worth. "I can't believe it! You're alive! How – what – where did that bird come from?" He gaped at Fawkes.

"He's Dumbledore's," said Harry shortly. "Let's get out of here; I'll explain as we go."

They made their way up the tunnel to the head, where Harry learned that Lockhart had lost all his memory as a result of the backfired spell.

Harry did not say much about the diary or the sword, only saying that it would come out soon and he didn't want to explain it more than once. Fawkes lifted the whole group up the great pipe-shaft towards Myrtle's loo, where the resident ghost received a shock at their survival.

Fawkes led the way to Professor McGonagall's office, his red and golden plumage luminescent in the corridor.

The reunion exceeded his emotional expectations by uncountable miles. The explanation drained him almost completely, but still Harry remained in the office with Dumbledore after everyone else had left.

Harry knew that Dumbledore was watching him, but he was not sure himself how to put his feelings into words. They were jumbled up and contorted, uneven.

"Professor," he began, "I didn't mention this earlier, but... when I stabbed the diary, I felt so much pain that I thought my head cracked open. I think I may have lost consciousness. But then I heard a voice I had never heard, and the voice told me I had destroyed it, and I don't know if it meant the diary or something else, but then..." and he found he could not continue. His face felt wet... he did not understand... and he was lost in himself for a long time.

And Fawkes was sitting on his leg when he returned, for whatever reason the phoenix had chosen, and he was singing a song that sounded deeply joyous. Harry looked up to see Dumbledore beaming at him, and that, somehow, was enough.

Dumbledore told him about a potion called "Dreamless Sleep", which he could get from Madam Pomfrey if he went to the hospital wing after the feast. Harry thought even the name sounded grand. He started to leave, but before he could fully open the door, it had been slammed open forcefully and Lucius Malfoy had entered the office.

He decided he would savor the memory of events that followed for a long time. He knew the now free elf called Dobby certainly would.

When he reached the Great Hall, he sat down in his usual spot at the Gryffindor table, and proceeded to put away much more food than he could ever remember doing. He ate so much that his stomach felt fit to pop. The basilisk's victims began turning up, having been awakened from the petrifications, and people came over to him apologizing repeatedly for their suspicions. Hermione had been elated that her hint had helped him solve it. Hagrid, upon return from Azkaban, thanked him for clearing his name.

After the feast, he decided to take Dumbledore's advice and went to the hospital wing to take some of the potion called "Dreamless Sleep". He was asleep within moments. Though he did not know it until the morning, a phoenix came to him in the hospital wing, appearing in a burst of flame over his bed, and it stayed with him through the night. True to the name of the "Dreamless Sleep" potion, he did not dream at all.

He awoke a few hours later to find the phoenix sitting on his knee. He stared at it without comprehension, not knowing why it was here. It was unmistakeably a phoenix, yet just as clearly not Fawkes. It was slimmer and slightly longer, but overall just about the same size. The scarlet and gold coloration of the plumage was unchanged, as were the golden beak and golden talons, and the fathomless black eyes. He reached out to it, and the bird was warm to his touch. It trilled, and the sounds evoked the same sensations in him. Then it lofted into the air and landed on his shoulder, as Fawkes had the previous night.

Harry was confused. Was this phoenix indicating that it was... his? He could not process the thought. It was too foreign and too big. But, he decided at length, it was not unwelcome, though he had no idea what it meant.

The end of the term approached inexorably. Dumbledore had announced at the feast that exams were being canceled as a treat, though there would still be several more days of classes.

Ginny Weasley was happy again after a couple days' spent subdued. But she stayed near her brothers whenever she was in the Gryffindor common room with any of them present. She had shyly thanked Harry for saving her life, but wouldn't say anything in front of him after that. He noticed that she'd been a touch red when she said it.

Draco Malfoy sulked almost the whole remainder of the term after his father Lucius was sacked as a Hogwarts Governor; Harry, Ron, and Hermione had a great number of laughs at this out of Malfoy's presence.

Snape continued to be thoroughly unpleasant, but Harry found he now had a strange resistance to it. Whispers and stares followed him everywhere, as did the phoenix. Most of his professors welcomed its presence, though of course Professor Binns, the ghost who taught History, did not notice it at all.

The two hundred points apiece Dumbledore had awarded Harry and Ron meant Gryffindor defended its House Cup leadership in dominating style. On the last night of the term, Harry lay awake in bed shortly following the Leaving Feast. Only two thoughts concerned him this night, sedated as he was by food and drink. One, he hoped to escape the Dursleys' house as quickly as possible. Two, that wherever he headed, the phoenix would be with him.


End file.
